On Scholarship and Scholarly Conventions

On Scholarship and Scholarly ConventionsAn Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy by Oliver LeamanReview by: Charles E. ButterworthJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 106, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1986), pp. 725-732Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/603534 .

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REVIEW ARTICLES

ON SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARLY CONVENTIONS*

CHARLES E. BUTTERWORTH

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK

AT THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THIS BOOK,

Leaman emphasizes his commitment to raising philosophical questions. The goal is stated most sharply in one of the concluding sentences: "Throughout this Introduction it has been argued that we can make good philosophical sense of Islamic philosophy without asking ... autobiographical and historical questions." The sentiment is noble and surely not to be disputed, even though one must admonish Leaman that when writing about others he should be desirous of exclud- ing biographical-not autobiographical-and historical questions. Only the most obdurate historicist would contend that investigation of such questions can ever possibly take the place of philosophical analysis. Yet Leaman's immediately following assertion that "the philosophical arguments are there to be analysed, and for that analysis we require nothing more than philosophical tools" is far too facile. One cannot begin to analyze arguments-that is, according to Leaman, to probe their validity and assess how interesting they are-without first determining what questions they address and, above all, what they mean. This is what warrants scholarly attention to such apparently biographical and historical questions as the purported audience for a particular treatise, the larger context of the work, and the subsidiary issues which occasion the particular arguments to be analyzed. Part of Leaman's failure in this potentially interesting book derives, then, from his erroneous understanding of how scholarship promotes philosophical inquiry and analysis.

The book could have made a modest contribution to the understanding generally educated Westerners have of Islam and Islamic thought. Leaman begins with an introductory account of how philosophy arose in Islam, its relationship to other disciplines within Islam such as dialectical theology or kalim, and what Islamic philosophy investigates. In the first part of the book he

* A review of An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Phi- losophy. By OLIVER LEAMAN. Pp. xii + 208. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1985.

tries to explain why philosophers within the Islamic tradition investigated questions usually associated with theological concerns such as the creation of the world, the resurrection of the dead, and God's knowledge of particulars as well as to show how their responses differed from those offered by the theologians, especially Ghazali. In the first two chapters of the second part, Leaman moves to more practical issues, namely, the difference between the philosophers and the theologians concerning the way humans learn to distinguish moral good from evil and the relationship between ultimate happiness and political order. In a concluding chapter quite unrelated to the rest of Part Two, Leaman launches a lively attack against what he terms the "esoteric" approach to the study of Islamic philosophy. Throughout the volume, he tries to draw the reader to his basic investigation by first formulating a large question which appeals to everyone's general curiosity and then continuously rephrasing the question until it is cast in a more manageable form which still retains its original allure. Leaman also seeks to capti- vate the reader by sharp criticism of established scholars: George Hourani, Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, Leo Strauss, and even the less renowned such as the present reviewer are all castigated for their inadequate grasp of Islamic philosophy in whole or in part.

These attractive elements notwithstanding, the book adds little to the current understanding of Islamic philosophy. Its potential is vitiated by too many substantive and formal errors as well as by Leaman's very serious failure to provide proper scholarly acknowledge- ment for quoted material. In what follows, I propose to offer examples of these various shortcomings and then to explore the soundness of Leaman's attack on what he terms the "esoteric" approach to the study of Islamic philosophy.

I. Leaman's goal, in his own words, is "to bring out something of the range and flavour of Islamic philosophy by following a number of central arguments and issues from their origins in theology to their

725



726 Journal of the American Oriental Society 106.4 (1986)

discussion in philosophy without attempting in any way to provide a comprehensive historical account of the period and its main thinkers" (p. xi). By way of introduction he does, however, set forth a brief exposition of Islam. In it he wavers between describing the divine law of Islam, the sharT'ah, as "judgments of the Culamd "' which "were gradually built up into a system of law" (p. 3) and as something "based on religious texts" (p. 6), that is, between sharTcah as man-made law and as revealed law. Leaman's confusion over the meaning of logical terms also leads him into error. Incorrectly identifying the term qiyas as analogy, by which he means reasoning "from the particular to the general," Leaman cites an example of reasoning from the general to the particular or deductive reasoning- namely, whether non-restrictive Quranic references to Muslims and believers apply to women and slaves who are Muslim as well-to illustrate the way it operates (p. 6). Such confusion plagues him throughout the book. Later, for example, Leaman appears to restrict the syllogism to one instance of its use, demonstration. He does so while offering, apparently as his own, the time-honored definition of qiyds or syllogism deriving from Aristotle and preserved by the commentators, namely, "an argument in which certain things having been assumed, something other than those assumptions follow[s] necessarily."'

Though hardly fatal to the larger exposition, both of these errors are worth citing insofar as they call attention to Leaman's penchant for superficial and imprecise descriptions of theoretical and factual matters as well as to what can most charitably be termed his nonchalant approach to scholarly attribution. The superficiality and imprecision arise as much from Leaman's desire to present a readable and engaging account of the philosophical arguments as from his steadfast refusal to reflect upon the larger textual setting in which they occur.

Thus at the beginning of Part One, Leaman gently leads the reader to discern the merit of wondering about the world's creation. In the process he notes, almost in passing, some of the responses given to this problem by the theologians and the differing responses of the philosophers. Then he abruptly charges the philosophers with being overly intent upon proving

' The addition of an "s" to Leaman's "follow" to make the verb agree with its subject "something" is my own. For the definition, see Leaman, p. 60 with Aristotle Prior Analytics 24b19-21 and Averroes Talkh4s Kitib al-Qiyds, ed. Butter- worth et al, (Cairo: GEBO, 1983), para. 6.

that the world was not created ex nihilo and questions what prompted that fixation. Leaving the query unan- swered, Leaman rephrases it more broadly and wonders whether the philosophers were just thoughtlessly repeat- ing statements of Aristotle. He makes no attempt to answer this query either, but turns instead to a lengthy discussion of various passages from Farabi, Avicenna, and Ghazali as well as from Averroes and Maimonides. Throughout this exposition, Leaman sometimes points to Ghazali's reasons for deeming certain questions of fundamental importance, but never does so for the philosophers. Yet the reader intent upon following the presentation needs more than sentences and paragraphs randomly taken from different books and treatises in order to grasp what the philosophers thought about the creation of the world. At the very least the reader needs to know the context in which the philosophers raise that question, how it relates to their understanding of God, and above all why such questions arise for them at all. Neither Leaman's disputatious assertions about the modus operandi of the philosophers nor his haphazard citing of phrases culled from various works of Ghazali, Maimonides, and medieval Muslim philosophers serves in any way to provide an adequate introduction to medieval Islamic philosophy.

Leaman's insistence upon bringing Ghazali and Maimonides under the rubric of medieval Islamic philosophy is equally difficult to fathom. Though he acknowledges that Ghazali can no more properly be termed a philosopher than Maimonides a Muslim, he justifies their inclusion by claiming that he finds the arguments of the one and the other interesting (p. 19). With respect to the way he presents Ghazali's thought, however, some deeper instinct of good judgment seems to have fortunately prevailed: Leaman mainly uses Ghazali to introduce the various topics discussed and invariably characterizes Ghazali's views as representing the traditional theological stance. Nothing of the sort makes his inclusion of Maimonides appropriate. In fact, his explanations of Maimonides' arguments usually extend into digressions suggesting how widely Leaman has read in the secondary literature on Mai- monides and Jewish thought in general, but contri- buting little to the exegesis of the principal topic.

Along with these criticisms of the thinkers whom Leaman singles out as representative of medieval Islamic philosophy and of the confusing manner in which he expounds their thought, a more fundamental doubt must be voiced. It is far from evident that an introduction to medieval Islamic philosophy can be fashioned from an investigation of whether the teachings of certain Muslim philosophers are ultimately



BUTTERWORTH: On Scholarship and Scholarly Conventions 727

consistent with doctrines of faith. Such an investigation is both too recondite and too obvious to serve as an introduction. Too recondite because it demands an understanding of the deepest metaphysical questions and thus of the many logical and physical reflections that lead to their formulation and eventual resolution. Too obvious because it can be immediately satisfied by seizing upon any of the numerous pious declarations to be found in the more popular writings of these philosophers. Leaman's decision to structure this book in terms of such an investigation reflects his own ambiv- alent approach to the issue. On the one hand, he is content to argue that philosophy-all philosophy- serves to explain religion, that it stands as the intel- lectual counterpart to revelation (p. 169). On the other, he recognizes that such a description hardly does justice to Islamic philosophy.2 Yet once he has made the latter admission, he is unable to settle upon anything else which better characterizes it.

Leaman's unorthodox manner of acknowledging the sources of his arguments and citations greatly hinders the specialized reader without notably benefitting the non-specialized reader. Oblique references to works used and erroneous page citations within them make it exceedingly difficult for the former to consult the primary sources directly. Consequently, such a reader must labor mightily to verify that problematic terms or passages have been rendered accurately and particular arguments correctly interpreted. Yet the book is by no means more accessible to the nonspecialized reader, for Leaman does not completely jettison scholarly procedure; he merely treats it cavalierly.

There are, for example, an unusual number of references that do not in fact indicate the original source material translated in the text (p. 30, n. 10; p. 83, n. 35; p. 96, n. 4; and p. 147, n. 33). In at least three additional instances, the problem can be traced to the wrong page of the work in question having been referenced (p. 29, n. 7; p. 96, n. 5; and p. 173, n. 2). Now these might be explained as the result of careless note-taking on Leaman's part, especially when some quite obvious instances of oversight are considered. Muhsin Mahdi's translation, Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, was published in 1962 by The Free

2 See Leaman, p. 190: "What the falasifa learnt from the Greeks was not limited to a number of interesting doctrines which appear to be inconsistent with Islamic revelation, such as the eternity of the world or difficulties about corporeal immortality, and so on, although the opposition to falsafa often centers upon such issues."

Press of Glencoe and by Cornell University Press only in 1969 (see p. 14, n. 5). The work of Averroes which Leaman cites as the Summary (Jami' [sic]) of Ari- stotle's Metaphysics (p. 66, n. 30) is in fact known as the Kitdb Ma Ba Id al- TabTcah or the Book of Meta- physics in the Hyderabad version indicated by Leaman. Justified as he is to identify this treatise as a "Sum- mary" or "Short Commentary," his rendering of the Arabic for the term in question is simply wrong: the correct Arabic term would be Jawdmi', that is, the plural of Jdmil. Along the same lines, the work of Ghazali which he cites as Al-Maqisid al-falhsifa in n. 5, p. 96 is in fact Ghazali's Maqisid al-faldsifa, as it is correctly rendered in the "Texts and Abbreviations" section on p. ix. Michael Marmura's article, "Ghazali's Attitude to the Secular Sciences and Logic," appeared on pp. 100-111 of Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science, edited by George F. Hourani and published in 1975, not on pp. 101-111 of Islamic Philosophical Theology, edited by Parviz Morewedge and published in 1979, as Leaman would have it (p. 83, n. 34). Finally, carelessness appears to prompt Leaman's identification of Muhsin Mahdi as the editor of Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and failure to mention his role as translator of this work throughout the Introduction and the first five chapters of the book under review (see p. 14, n. 5; p. 147, nn. 32 and 34; p. 174, n. 3; and p. 180, nn. 7 and 8), then to prompt Leaman's consistent reference to Mahdi as the translator of the work in Chapter Six (see p. 190, n. 2 and p. 198, n. 19).

Are all of these errors adequately explained, however, when set down as so many instances of negligence? Michael Marmura's discovery of a peculiar feature about Leaman's inattentiveness to the conventions of scholarly procedure would suggest not. Dismayed at finding several of his own previously published translations presented here as though they were in fact Leaman's (see p. 83, n. 33; p. 84, n. 36; p. 111, n. 4; p. 112, n. 5; p. 115, n. 9; and p. 137, n. 14), Marmura looked more closely at yet others and found Leaman claiming as his own two originally published by George F. Hourani (see p. 132, n. 8 and p. 138, n. 15), five first published by Lawrence V. Berman (see p. 141, n. 19; p. 142, n. 20; and p. 144, nn. 22-24) plus one originally published by Fazlur Rahman (see p. 148, n. 35).

To the possible objection that it is difficult to be highly original when translating technical philosophical texts accurately and that it is therefore not surprising for two different persons to arrive quite independently at similar translations of a given text, three responses must be made. First, the question is about translations that apart from minor variations are literally identical,



- 728 Journal of the American Oriental Society 106.4 (1986)

not ones that are similar or even highly similar. Second, Leaman shows himself in other circumstances to be most adept at finding novel, even idiosyncratic, translations (see p. 14, n. 5 and p. 147, nn. 32 and 34). Third, Michael Marmura has also pointed out that in a reference to one translated passage, Leaman provides the same incorrect page number Marmura himself had inadvertently cited in his original translation.3

The more one looks at Leaman's text from this perspective, the less credible it becomes. There is, for example, the highly unusual note 16 on p. 138 which reads "Ibid. = Ihyd', I, ed. 'IrdqT, p. 113" and which refers to a few lines from a passage in Ghazali's al-Mustasf i min Ulm al- Usul first translated by George F. Hourani. It stands out both because Leaman employs such a system of shorthand nowhere else in the book and because he never indicates why he wishes to draw attention here to textual similarity between this work and Ghazali's IJyJ' 'U/im al-DTn. Reflection upon Marmura's charge that the translated passage referred to in the immediately preceding note (n. 15, p. 138) was first published by George F. Hourani in this

4 very journal serves to clarify the mystery. In his own citation for the first passage from the Mustasfd repro- duced by Leaman, Hourani urged the reader to com- pare these lines with a passage from the fhya ' appearing in Volume One, p. 113 of Iraqi's edition which corre- sponds or is identical to (=) that appearing on pp. 26-27 and 51-52 of A. L. Tibawi's al-Ghazili's Tract on Dogmatic Theology and to consider yet another work of Ghazali's, al-Iqtisaddft al-Ictiqdd.' By means of this note, then, Leaman shows how dependent he is on the scholarly work of another, how unwilling he is to acknowledge his debts fully, and how poorly he understands the basic references Hourani used consis- tently throughout his article.

3 See Michael Marmura, "Leaman's Introduction to Medi- eval Islamic Philosophy: A Review Article," The Muslim World, 76 (1986), pp. 43-45. The reference in question is n. 5 onp. 112.

4 See George F. Hourani, "Ghaz&l on the Ethics of Action," JA OS 96 (1976), pp. 69-88. The translated passage occurs on p. 82 and is identified in n. 73. Leaman's n. 16, p. 138 is meant to identify lines from Ghazali's al-Musta~yfa which Hourani translated in n. 19, p. 72 of his article. By substituting the term "necessity" in quotes where Hourani left the Arabic term wdjib untranslated, Leaman errs; the proper translation would be the adjectival "necessary." ' The note (Hourani, ibid., p. 82, n. 73) reads: "Mustausfd, I,

39. Cf. Ihya', I, 113 = Tibawi, pp. 26-27 and 51-52; IqtisId, pp. 189-91 = Asin, pp. 285-88."

However these errors are ultimately explained, they must be blamed. So, too, must Leaman's indifference to such basic rules of English grammar as agreement between subject and verb (see p. 3, line 36 "but none of these controversies were" and p. 12, lines 25-26 "the use of such philosophical concepts were") and unity of verb tenses (see p. 13, lines 11-12 "it might be argued that the Prophet implies the significance of reason when he abolished prophecy"). Leaman fares no better with Arabic, for he does not understand the rules of the construct case, the use of the definite article, or the making of nouns into adjectives any better than he understands the rules for the doubling of consonants. Thus, in keeping with the system of transliteration he habitually employs, Leaman's rendering of the Arabic for "the legal and religious sciences" could have been either al-Culum ash-shar'-Cya wad-dfnfya or ulum al-sharT'a wad-dtn, but under no circumstances can what he does set forth be accepted: al- culim ash- sharF 'a wadfnfya (see p. 129, lines 29-30). His transliteration of the Arabic term for "pilgrimage" as ha] rather than ha]j is no more excusable (see p. 130, lines 4 and 9; also Glossary, p. 204). At times Leaman's approach to Arabic can only be termed imaginative, as when he claims that the plural of mithal (example or similitude) is mithlhlt and not the more recognizable muthul or amthilah (see Glossary, p. 204) or that the Arabic version of the book Short Commentaries on Aristotle's "Topics," "Rhetoric," and "Poetics" is Talkhfs kitlb al-jadal, al-khatdbah, al-shi'r (see Texts and Abbreviations, p. ix) instead of Jawdmi' Kutub AristiddlTs f T al-Jadal wa al-Khitabah wa al-Shi'r, a point on which the editor and translator of these works insisted at some length.6

II. Leaman's final chapter is an adaptation, with cosmetic alterations, of his article "Does the Interpreta- tion of Islamic Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" first published about half a dozen years ago in the Inter- national Journal of Middle East Studies. He says nothing here about the earlier version of the chapter and concentrates instead upon presenting it as a final defense of his approach to philosophy throughout the book. Priding himself upon having taken philosophical arguments "at their face-value" and having eschewed

6 See Averroes' Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle's "Topics, " "Rhetoric, " and "Poetics, " edited and translated by Charles E. Butterworth (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), pp. 6-7 and 145; the particle li before kutub on p. 145 should be dropped.




"any much more profound interpretative devices," he disparages those who tend to look for "what is hidden in the text by the author" and who "put forward a dazzling variety of hermeneutic techniques" (p. 182). In the IJMES article version, this latter kind of activity was termed the "standard" approach to Islamic philosophy, the implication being that there was something unusual or novel about Leaman's own interpretative procedure. Now, however, he seems intent upon viewing his "face-value" method as the standard or usual approach and the other as so out of the ordinary that only the term "esoteric" properly fits it. Part of Leaman's defense of his own approach consists of an attack upon this "esoteric" approach or at least upon aspects of it that he claims to discern in the scholarship of Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, Leo Strauss, and this reviewer.

In its simplest formulation, Leaman's "face-value" approach to Islamic philosophy views interpretation as anything but problematic: "Is it not just a matter of looking at the arguments, picking out interesting points and judging the strength or otherwise of the reasoning process which they contain?"' From this perspective, there is no reason to suspect that philosophers within the Islamic tradition wrote any differently than philosophers in any other tradition. To be sure, Leaman concedes that scholars must be sensitive to the different ways in which changes in language and in historical circumstances can affect the formulation of ideas or even give special prominence to questions whose significance is not immediately apparent. The concession goes no further, for Leaman denies both that the arguments of philosophers express anything but "their real views" and that they sought "to conceal those views by writing in a special way."

In the dialogues of Plato, however, Socrates is frequently portrayed as employing lies, myths, and other deceptive devices to persuade his interlocutors to embrace opinions they would otherwise reject or as generally extolling the usefulness of deception when communicating with the public at large. All of the philosophers within the Islamic tradition acknowledge the usefulness of deception in one way or another, Averroes being the most explicit champion of the practical benefits to be derived from the skillful adaptation of Socrates' devious speeches and deeds set forth in the Republic. Leaman admits this fact, but seeks to diminish its significance by imputing to Averroes a desire to distinguish between white lies, allegories, or

7 For this phrase as well as the words cited at the end of the paragraph, see Leaman p. 182.

stories and real lies-the latter being in his view statements "designed to mislead people concerning the truth," whereas "a story in the philosophical sense is merely a statement which is untrue, and patently so" (p. 185). To make his point, Leaman moves from an unwarranted inference about Ralph Lerner's explanation of what Averroes intended by his endorsement of Socrates' deceptive devices to an equally untenable assertion that the noble lie (pseudos gennaion) so hesitantly proposed by Socrates at the end of Book Three of the Republic (414c-415d) is merely a myth or simile differing in no wise from the simile or image (eikon) of the cave boldly proposed at the beginning of Book Seven (514a-518b, esp. 517a).8

Lerner is no more intent upon portraying Averroes as "an advocate of the idea that God set out to deceive his followers in his revelation" (Leaman, p. 183) than Socrates is upon equating the noble lie of Book Three with the image of the cave in Book Seven or the myth of Er in Book Ten. Indeed, Lerner's analysis focuses upon the relationship between the philosopher, the wise ruler, and the prophet so as to explain why each may consider deception to be good and even just; and Socrates has recourse to the three different kinds of deceptions for quite distinct reasons, something he clearly signals by presenting each one with a different demeanor not unnoticed by his interlocutors and by labeling each one differently. Even were Leaman's attack on Lerner accurate, it would in no way advance his larger argument. Nor is that its function. It serves rather to promote his "face-value" interpretative approach and to suggest in advance the dangerous consequences of the "esoteric" approach. Almost as a tacit admission that neither goal can be reached by this tactic, Leaman confesses that Averroes and the other philosophers within the Islamic tradition were justifi- ably interested in deceptive devices and then shifts his attack to another front (see pp. 185-86).

He does so by overstating the claims of those who pursue the "esoteric" approach and by restricting the sphere in which philosophical deception might be justified. For Leaman, the proponents of the "esoteric" approach long for an alternative to confronting the philosophic arguments within a given text. They believe that an appreciation of the circumstances surrounding its composition, namely, "the way in which the text incorporates the conflict between religion and disbelief within a specific cultural and historical context" will provide a key to its understanding (see p. 186). To Leaman's way of thinking, there is nothing novel about

8 See Leaman, p. 183.




the emphasis they place upon this conflict, and he cites as evidence two earlier interpretative currents which focused upon it: one claimed that Islamic philosophy was thoroughly rationalist and thus staunchly anti- religious, while the other portrayed the Islamic philosophers as seeking to reconcile faith and reason in their writings. He also seizes upon Muhsin Mahdi's explanation that the latter interpretation derives from the attempts of the Islamic philosophers to defend their philosophic quest, seeking thereby both to epitomize the "esoteric" approach and to intimate that it is merely the most recent in a series of overdrawn interpretations of Islamic philosophy (see pp. 189-90).

Leaman considers all three interpretations faulty insofar as each assumes, first, "that the conflict between religion and philosophy, an aspect of the clash between belief and disbelief, is a constant theme and interest of the faldsifa" and, second, that the latter clash "is a crucial theme of Islamic philosophy (all Islamic philosophy)" (p. 190, emphasis in the original). He thinks it possible, however, to identify areas of Islamic philosophy where that clash is not at issue. In his opinion, the Islamic philosophers were devout Muslims and thus troubled when Aristotle's "formally valid" arguments "appeared to oppose what they accepted on the basis of revelation." Consequently, they concentrated upon "the form of the argument, not the conclusion or its premisses" (see pp. 190-91). Since no evidence is offered for these assertions, it is difficult to fathom how Leaman arrived at them or why they are to be considered accurate. Moreover, this whole line of reasoning leads him to a conclusion that goes directly against the most fundamental teaching of Islamic philosophy.

Having exaggerated what prompts scholars to follow the "esoteric" approach by claiming that they view it as a way to explain philosophic texts without having to analyze their arguments, he now seeks to limit its applicability by insisting that works concerned with the reconciliation of religion and philosophy comprise only a small part of the corpus of Islamic philosophy. Commentaries on Plato and Aristotle as well as general expositions of Greek philosophy far outnumber the treatises devoted to themes of reconciliation. Forgetting momentarily his earlier admission that the Islamic philosophers do indeed have recourse to deceptive devices, Leaman now queries whether they "have anything to hide" and then attempts to explain that they merely view religion and philosophy as two "radically different forms of knowledge," neither one of which is subordinate to the other. Relying upon Farabi's argument in the Book of Letters that religion uses persuasion and imitation to provide the multitude with an understanding of the theoretical and practical matters dis-

covered in philosophy,9 Leaman portrays the two as being in basic harmony: Religion derives its truth from revelation, philosophy its truth from demonstration. Now both simple logic and fidelity to the way the philosophers developed this line of reasoning should lead Leaman to conclude that the truth reached by each, however different the paths to it, is the same. It is therefore surprising to find him claiming precisely the opposite: "Yet it is a theme offalsafa that this difference does not imply that the answers must be reflections of the same truth, which is itself established in different ways" (Leaman, p. 191, my emphasis).

The error here is, nonetheless, in keeping with his larger explanation of Islamic philosophy. Siding with Ghazali as it were, Leaman denies the philosophers' claim that there is complete harmony between the teaching set forth in the popular works and that expounded in the more philosophic treatises. At the same time, he insists that Ghazali is mistaken to attack the philosophers for setting forth teachings at odds with revelation in their philosophic treatises, urging instead that the investigations pursued in those works are not applicable to the theological questions Ghazali deems of such major importance (see Leaman, pp. 58- 59 and 119-20).

Leaman is thus ultimately obliged to seek refuge in a variant of the "double-truth" explanation of Islamic philosophy. He is drawn to that position because of his insistence that substantive differences arise from the different logical methods employed in religion and philosophy. This error stems in turn from his faulty understanding of what the philosophers have to say about the way these logical methods function. His "face-value" approach does not, for example, allow him to distinguish between the dialectical, rhetorical, and even sophistical reasoning Averroes uses when attacking Ghazali in the Tahdfut al- Tahdfut or the Fasl al-Maqdl and the more rigorous reasoning he uses in his commentaries on Aristotle and Plato, that is, in his philosophic or scientific treatises. The proponents of what Leaman terms the "esoteric" approach do pay attention to these differences and try to understand in their light the philosophers' claim that the teaching of their popular treatises accords with that of their philosophic or scientific treatises. They take note of deceptive devices, variations in logical method, and apparent inconsistencies between one work and another not in order to fashion a key to be applied willy-nilly to each and every text, but rather in order to account for the whole in whose explanation and interpretation they are

9 See Farabi, Book of Letters, ed. Muhsin Mahdi (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1969), para. 108, p. 131 with Leaman, p. 19 1.




engaged. They do not consider it reasonable to judge the validity of an argument before arriving at a full description of what it is about and a full assessment of its logical character.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this approach is to reply to Leaman's attack on my interpretation of Averroes' Short Commentary on Aristotle's Topics and Short Commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Lea- man views these as technical treatises on logic and therefore denies that Averroes would discuss matters pertinent to the relationship between religion and philosophy in them. My argument that he does refer to such questions in these treatises is therefore a sign of blameworthy enthusiasm for the "esoteric" approach and of an equally blameworthy disinterest in logic. For him, the basic issue in the first treatise is how dialectic may be differentiated from demonstration. That Aver- roes severely restricts the investigative functions of dialectic in this treatise does not alarm Leaman, for he knows that Averroes actually uses the art elsewhere in ways denied possible here. Conversely, my drawing attention to these restrictions and trying to explain how they can be consistent with Averroes' account of dialectic in his other works and with Aristotle's own teaching about dialectic indicates to Leaman that I have dismissed the whole art of dialectic and deem its use to be simply wrong. Noting, for example, that the dialectical theologians criticized the use of dialectic in certain circumstances while approving of its use in others, he finds nothing extraordinary about Averroes' harsh attacks upon the dialectical theologians in the second treatise and prefers to view them merely as contemporary illustrations serving to advance logical teachings (see Leaman, pp. 191-94).

Simply stated, Leaman's attack is based on a cari- cature of what I actually wrote. I began by explaining why these were not to be considered as technical treatises on logic and by drawing attention to the very selective presentation Averroes makes of both dialectic and rhetoric in these treatises. He says nothing, for example, of the investigative uses to which dialectic may be put and, until the very end of the treatise on rhetoric, is equally silent about the way rhetoric is to be used. More importantly, even though some of what he says about dialectic is simply at odds with what Aristotle has to say about the art, Averroes passes over the disagreement in silence. 1

If anything, it was my interest in understanding the art of logic and its constituent parts as a whole which

10 See Averroes' Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle's "Topics, ""Rhetoric, "and "Poetics, "op. cit., pp. 19-41, esp. 21-24 and 24-31.

prompted me to inquire about these discrepancies. I looked beyond the surface of the text only because the surface made no sense; differently phrased, I found that a "face-value" approach to the text did not do justice to its complexities. It soon became evident that the only way to explain the problems in each of the treatises was to read them as part of a larger whole and to use one to explain what was missing or over-stated in the other. Thus I argued that Averroes' enigmatic refusal to ascribe any investigative uses to dialectic, strict limiting of the dialectical induction, and silence about the dialectical theologians in the treatise on dialectic could be explained by reflecting upon how he emphasizes the public or popular character of rhetoric and harshly criticizes the dialectical theologians in the treatise on rhetoric. My reflections were further stimu- lated by the knowledge that rhetoric was not deemed a logical art in traditional Islamic accounts of the arts and sciences and that in both Greek and Islamic philosophy it was considered to be ancillary to politics. It seemed to me, therefore, that Averroes' unusual presentation of dialectic and rhetoric was a sign of his refusal to consider the art employed by the dialectical theologians as anything more rigorous than rhetoric, and exceedingly blameworthy rhetoric at that.

In making such an argument, I did indeed claim to discern political overtones in two otherwise quite innoc- uous treatises on logical arts. It is this claim that prompts Leaman's attack upon me as a representative of the "esoteric" approach. As noted above, this claim is rooted in the discrepancies I noticed between the way Averroes discusses dialectic and rhetoric in these treatises and the way he discusses them in other treatises as well as the way Aristotle discusses each of them. Leaman does not contest that finding. He differs with me because he is content to leave the matter there and to consider such discrepancies as typical of the kind of presentation to be encountered in a short commentary. Thus he believes the treatises to be "written in a manner perfectly consistent with the standard form of philosophical logic of that period" (p. 194). There are two problems with this assertion. One is that it contradicts the principle Leaman insists is fundamental to his whole book, namely, that there is no need to ask historical questions in order to explain Islamic philosophy (see p. 201). The other is that it is simply not true, as the most cursory look at related treatises by Farabi and Avicenna will prove. For this reason precisely, it is necessary to ask why Averroes presented these two logical arts in such an enigmatic manner.

Leaman's final tilt at the "esoteric" approach consists of a puerile attack on Leo Strauss' interpretation of Farabi's Summary of Plato's Laws. Strauss read




Farabi's Summary attentively and painstakingly com- pared it with Farabi's Philosophy of Plato as well as the whole Platonic corpus in an effort to discern what Farabi is trying to say in each of these works. He presented many reflections on how Farabi views Socra- tes as opposed to Plato and what he makes of Socrates' absence from the Laws, but felt he could claim to have done no more than followed "one of the threads of the argument of the first chapter" of the Summary.1l Masterful and demanding as is Strauss' analysis of the text, Leaman dismisses it by suggesting that the textual difficulties explained by Strauss "can be seen to be not difficulties at all, but rather normal ways of going about writing philosophy" (p. 196). Similarly, suggesting that Islamic philosophy be viewed as "ordinary philosophy," Leaman dismisses Strauss' detailed account of the various ways Farabi refers to Plato and Plato's speeches as nothing more than "stylistic variations" meant to suggest his greater or lesser appreciation of their relevance (p. 197). Well, yes, that may be so; but philosophical interpretation, like pudding, must be put to the test. Leaman offers none for his conjec- tures. Strauss does. The one attempt Leaman does make to display his understanding of Farabi's teaching proves only that he has not understood even its outlines: To buttress his claim that "thefalasifa were eager to avoid the fate of Socrates, who was put to death, according to them, for his failure to disguise his teaching adequately," Leaman refers the reader to a passage from Farabi's Philosophy of Plato; there Farabi claims that "Thrasymachus was more able than Socrates to form the character of the youth and

XI See Leo Strauss, "How FArdbT Read Plato's Laws," in Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1959), p. 150 or, in the version cited by Leaman, p. 338.

instruct the multitude," whereas "Socrates possessed only the ability to conduct a scientific investigation of justice and the virtues, and a power of love, but did not possess the ability to form the character of the youth and the multitude"; Farabi says absolutely nothing here about Socrates being inept at disguising his teaching. 12

Leaman's attack on the "esoteric" approach Strauss has followed in explaining Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed is even weaker and does not merit serious consideration. Leaman, for example, does not even take note of Maimonides' own warning to the reader about the different ways in which he will express himself throughout the treatise. In sum, Leaman does not show the "esoteric" approach to be erroneous. If anything, he merely displays his own ignorance about the texts that those cited as using such an approach seek to explain. Nor does he demonstrate the superiority of his "face-value" approach. Again, if anything, he only succeeds in proving why it is inadequate for serious philosophical interpretation.

For all of these reasons, then, the book under review fails miserably as an introduction to Islamic philosophy. It deserves such close scrutiny only because Leaman's unwarranted attacks upon serious scholarship cannot go unchallenged and because his affronts to scholarly procedure cannot be passed over in polite or embar- rassed silence. Learning is threatened today by sim- plistic appeals for facile solutions to complex questions, and Leaman's volume is a marvelous example of this threat.

12 See Leaman, p. 198, n. 19. For the passage from Farabi, see para. 36 of the translation of Farabi's Philosophy of Plato by Muhsin Mahdi in Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle cited above.



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On Scholarship and Scholarly Conventions